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Politics : Should God be replaced? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bill Fischofer who wrote (10390)	2/9/2002 2:08:13 PM
From: Steve Lee	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 28931

I have never been able to decide if we really have free will or not. If two people take different paths in life, then there must be some fudamental difference in their design or their circumstances. What makes one person choose to be "righteous" and another choose to be "evil". If you gave two people exactly the same circumstances then they would act the same. And it is a game of charades. If we were created with the capacity for anger and for hunger and for pain into a world of limited resources then we were set up to steal and murder. The fact that "sin" is so universal shows it to be a design flaw if we are expected to be free of sin.

To: Bill Fischofer who wrote (10390)	2/9/2002 2:12:27 PM
From: epicure	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 28931

Free will I think is greatly overestimated It is hard for me to see the free will involved when we are born to a particular set of parents, in particular circumstances, and with a very particular genetic code which will condemn us to brilliance, mediocrity, or moronity, and with a temperament that may well govern most of our social interactions. I do not see free will in floods, famines, war and pestilence- perhaps the great leaders have some "free will" in war, but that is not often available to the victims of war. I think it is probably true that the universe is pitiless, blind (to us) and indifferent and that what happens to us is also largely determined. But even so, if we are born into happy circumstances it is good to be happy, and if we are born into sad circumstances, it is probably best to try to see them as happy. Of course my opinion on this matter may be purely determined by who I am, and what has gone before. I've no way of knowing.